


The White King

by DarkBlue



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Cullistair, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28267269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkBlue/pseuds/DarkBlue
Summary: Alistair is in Templar training when a new recruit is interested in playing chess. A friendship develops. (A cute through-the-years romp of Cullen and Alistair.)
Relationships: Alistair/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	The White King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jellysharkbat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellysharkbat/gifts).



> A part of the Dragon Age Holiday Exchange 2020 on Tumblr! Gifted to the lovely jellysharkbat. Happy holidays!

“What are you doing?”

The boy frowning thick eyebrows in puzzlement at a board in front of him looked up. “Hmm? Oh. I’m trying to play a two-person game alone.”

“Oh.” The other, slim and blonde, blushed. “Right then. I’ll leave you to it.”

“What? Oh no! I meant – Maker, I’m the worst at this – I mean, you should play with me.”

“We’re not allowed to play games,” said the blonde boy warily, still hovering uncertainly behind the back of a chair.

“We’re allowed to play this one. That’s why they let me keep the board my uncle gave me. It’s supposed to be a strategy game. Good for battles, that sort of thing. Tactical thinking.”

“Oh. I like tactics.”

“Don’t leave on that account. Only joking! Sorry, sit! Sit! Think of it as the only game you’re allowed to play when they pass by. Do you want a go?”

“I don’t know how to play.” The slim boy hesitated, his long-fingered hands draped over the back of the chair. “I don’t even know what it is.”

“This? Oh, I’m so stupid! I’m sorry. It’s chess.”

“Chess?”

“Yeah. You move these pieces around the board and try to capture the other ones. But they’ve all got special rules how they move – it’s a lot.”

“Oh.”

“But,” and the boy with the thick eyebrows looked desperate. He had a square face even as a child, with glinting hazel eyes and dark blonde hair that stuck straight up from his forehead. “I’ll teach you!”

“You will?”

“Yeah. Like I said. It’s a two-person game, and I’ve been bored trying to play it alone.”

The other boy hesitated another brief moment, then pulled out the chair from the small wooden table and sank into it.

The heat from the fires in the hall was negligible to the stonework of the winter bite, even in the interior. He shivered.

“You should get a mantle,” observed the boy with the chess set. “If you’re cold.”

“Maybe,” said the other, noncommittally. Then: “I’m Cullen. Cullen Rutherford.”

“Alistair.”

“Alistair?”

“Yes. Just Alistair, or are you going to make me say it?”

Cullen’s oval face crinkled in puzzlement. “Say what?”

“I’m a bastard, okay?”

Cullen’s face flooded pink. He locked his fingers together. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not as bad as you think,” said Alistair, rather belligerently. “My mother was a serving maid. She died when I was a baby. And I think my uncle is my – you know what I mean.”

“Oh.”

“You say that a lot.”

“Sorry,” Cullen stammered.

“Shy, are you?”

“What? No.”

“You _are._ You are!”

“I don’t know.”

“So how’d you end up here? And look, I’m setting it up this way, white against black. You can be white, and I’ll help you.”

“Thanks. What do you mean?”

“Well I got shipped to this Maker-forsaken monastery because of my uncle’s wife who didn’t want me around. I guess they figured the Chantry would find some use for me. I was never one for books and letters, so monk was basically out. Now I’m stuck doing sword work and becoming a templar. Can’t _wait_ to take my vows and drink lyrium for the Maker. What about you?”

“Oh,” and Cullen blushed even more deeply. “I…wanted to come.”

“You’re _joking_ ,” said Alistair flatly.

“No. I wanted to become a Templar. I used to ask the Templars at Honnleath to teach me. It took years, but I guess my parents gave in, and now I’m here.”

“Maker help me, you _like_ this stuff?”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

Alistair laughed, then stopped quickly, rubbing a hand over a thick eyebrow. “Oh, you’re serious. Uh…sure. And you’re new here, right?”

“I know I’m older,” said Cullen defensively.

“I’m fourteen. And I’ve been here stuck in this – er…hole – for four miserable years.”

“I’m thirteen.”

“A _baby_ ,” Alistair exclaimed delightedly.

“Shut up.”

“You _do_ have a bite.” Alistair looked even more delighted. “I thought for a bit you’d be all holier-than-thou and prim and stuff.”

Cullen scowled at the board, and Alistair laughed.

“How do you play?”

“Well, we’ll start with the pawns. These are supposed to be troops. They can only move one square forward at a time, except in the first move, which they can go ‘at a charge,’ and move two. They can also only take pieces at the diagonal.”

“A flanking strategy.”

“What?”

“The diagonal. You’re supposed to frame two pawns like a pincer move, right?”

Alistair shook his head in disbelief. “You weren’t kidding about loving tactics. I’ve been playing this game since I was about seven years old and I didn’t realize that. But don’t worry, I’m absolutely rubbish at it. You won’t have a hard time beating me.”

Cullen frowned, a protest on his lips. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” said Alistair cheerfully. “Like I said. I didn’t want to be here.”

“Don’t you like any of it?”

“Well sure. I like having a sword and shield. I like getting stronger. I like horses, I can’t wait to start mounted combat. But I don’t like running drills in full plate. I don’t like conditioning workouts on the battlement stairs. The food here is terrible.”

Cullen cracked a reluctant smile. “I don’t think anyone likes those things.”

“Andraste be praised! You aren’t a saint after all!”

“No,” Cullen smiled. “I guess not.”

* * *

Cullen stared out the window of the healing hospital, a letter half unfurling in one hand. It had been horrible. All his friends were dead. He was nineteen. Uldred had murdered them and tortured him. And even the mages were dead. He had carried the body of a child in his arms, missing half her skull and been sick in the bushes.

He had heard them talking quietly behind his back. _Not fit for service_ and _shell shocked_. He was to be sent to be knight-captain somewhere. Somewhere with lots of other templars to make sure he wasn’t going to go crazy and overdose on lyrium. With his luck, it’d be out of Fereldan altogether.

How had life gone so differently then, for Alistair?

He remembered two years before, when Alistair was to take the Templar Vow, the Warden Duncan had come. Alistair had gone willingly. He had thrown away _years_ of service for…for what? But he had been happy to go. Happy to risk his life and die in ruin slaying darkspawn instead of in service to the Maker.

“Don’t,” he had teased Cullen, his wry mouth twisting. “Don’t look so sour. I’m happy, I really am. At least now all those stair runs will be for something.”

And now? A year later? Alistair had found him with the other Warden, the elven girl, kneeling on the floor of a barrier he had erected himself, scared out of his mind after not sleeping for three days and waiting for his concentration to waver, even a moment, to be devoured. So often nightmares and dreams had come to ripple unpleasantly outside the barrier, whispering _things_ to him.

It hadn’t even felt real when Alistair’s warm arms had gone under his own and dragged him backwards from the ruin. Cullen had lost consciousness then. When he had woken, Alistair was gone, and a worried mage was bending over him, tending to him.

Cullen had shouted, flinching back and scrambling away, pointing a trembling sword towards a woman old enough to be his grandmother. She had only _looked_ at him, her face full of compassion, and he had lost consciousness to re-awaken in the healing hospital, where he had been for two months.

The months were not ones worth remembering. But it had kept him in one place long enough for Mia to write, and for Alistair to send a letter. He held it now.

_King._

Alistair was a bastard after all. Maric’s bastard.

How had the worst year of Cullen’s life been Alistair’s best? How could life be so unevenly matched? Cullen had lasted one year as a templar in the real world, and failed immediately when the call came to slay abominations. It had been easy to slice into the demons, but he had knelt down, tears streaming down his face, when a child had screamed in fear before him.

He was nineteen.

And he was alone.

He should have died, like the others did, for his beliefs. But he was weak. And everything the demon had come to whisper to him in his three-day vigil was burned into his brain forever.

Now he was holding a letter inviting him to the coronation and wedding – _wedding_ – of Alistair Theirin.

New last name. New wife.

A hastily scrawled note in the margin _it doesn’t mean anything, it’s all political, it doesn’t change what we –_

It was left unfinished.

Just like they were.

Alistair had left so abruptly. What was Cullen supposed to think?

He crumpled the note in a fist as he heard a Chantry sister come in. Alistair had said something about traveling with a Chantry sister. Something about the warden being the first _woman_ he had slept with.

“Good news, I hope?” asked the Chantry sister. She was his age, and very pretty. It made Cullen’s stomach twist to look at her, so he felt himself blush and look away.

“No. Just trash.” And he thrust the letter into the fire to take the tray she had brought.

* * *

“Announcing King Alistair Theirin and Queen Anora!” the herald cried.

Cullen could feel his heart beating hard against the breastplate of his armor, but he kept his face stoic, his gaze trained straight ahead. He was behind his helmet, there was no way to pick him out of any of Meredith’s standing ranks to give formality to the visit to Kirkwall.

Five years.

He hadn’t seen Alistair in five years, and the change had wrought great differences in him. He wore a narrow chin beard, which Cullen thought didn’t suit his square jawed face at all. But his dark blonde hair still stuck up from his forehead, his expressive eyebrows were still tilted up in a sly expression of amusement, even as he kept his mouth set.

There was a fleeting glance, one where Cullen reminded himself Alistair could not tell him apart, where their eyes locked through the grill of his helmet. But then Alistair was moving forward, looking awkward and uncomfortable in his royal hose and tabard instead of how he looked, at ease, sweating and shrugging in various states of armored.

Cullen relaxed back into his hips slightly in the way of resting at parade stance and let his mind wander. Five years since he had seen Alistair and he was married now, though the couple notably had no children.

There were wild rumors about it too, that Alistair and the Hero of Fereldan were lovers. That Alistair and a bardic Chantry sister were lovers. That the bardic Chantry sister and the Hero of Fereldan were lovers, and they both slept in Alistair’s bed. It was all nonsense, as far as Cullen could glean. He had only met the Chantry sister and Hero of Fereldan in passing, when he was half dead and fainting in Alistair’s arms, but he had been so focused on Alistair he hadn’t given them a thought.

“Knight captains! Take your troops!” Meredith’s voice rang clear and cool.

Cullen turned right on autopilot, signaling with his perfectly angled arm, and filed out behind the others. In the hall off to one side, men and women were pulling off their helmets with huge gulps of air. Many faces were streaked with sweat; summers in the Free Marches were muggy from the swampy air near the harbors.

Cullen crossed the room without talking to anyone to set his sword and shield on a stone bench before reaching up and pulling his helmet off, then unbuckling a bracer with clumsy fingers in his armored gloves.

A sudden hush had fallen over the room, and Cullen, frowning, looked up and around.

A figure was in the doorway, and in a rippling motion, templars were falling to one knee, bowing their head as a puzzled and irritated Alistair locked eyes with Cullen.

“Can we have the room?” he asked airily.

There was a sudden mad rush to the door that nearly trampled the king had he not stepped out of the way, with rumors pinging electrically as people fled, not bothering to lower their voices.

“Cheeky to the last,” said Cullen dryly, crossing the room in two quick strides and gripping Alistair’s hand in his own in welcome. He realized belatedly he was still wearing armored gauntlets, a rude gesture to shake hands, especially to a king, but Alistair was staring equally bemused at his own hand, where Cullen’s gauntlet had pulled off in his own.

They both laughed.

“Let me help you,” Alistair said, immediately going for his shoulder pauldron.

“Oh, no,” Cullen protested feebly, but his hand was busy unbuckling the other gauntlet.

“You must be cooking alive.”

“It’s rather warm.”

“Full plate. Just for me.”

“You are a king.”

Alistair sighed, blustery and annoyed. “So they keep telling me. But there, let me get this over your head – “

Cullen ducked – when had he become taller? – so that Alistair could pull the single piece shoulder pauldron over his head and set it on the bench behind him.

He turned back around to find Alistair studying him.

“You’re thin,” he commented quietly.

Cullen tried to laugh it off. “Jealous? From your fine eating?”

Alistair was not fat, but he had filled out into a strong frame that suited his square jaw with age and his crowning.

“I heard,” Alistair paused, then skirted the topic. “There’s been some trouble here? In Kirkwall?”

Cullen straightened at once, his knight-captain role sliding into place subconsciously. “Yes. The mages have been giving us some trouble, there is are also smuggling operations and non-unified leadership in the city, and an upstart Fereldan refugee who recently became quite popular in the city and lives in High Town now.”

“My,” mocked Alistair lightly. “And those pesky Fereldans. Getting in everywhere.”

Cullen cracked a weary smile even through his official glaze. “So it would seem. But really, if you want a better report, you should talk to Meredith. She will- “

“I will. I’m sure. You know my whole life is planned out for me,” said Alistair, slightly bitterly. “Makes me wish I was still a Warden. At least then I could piss without it being scheduled time. I had to sneak away just to see you.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve never seen anyone stand as straight as you, even in parade rest. Plus, I saw the hilt of your sword.”

Cullen felt his cheeks heat, and cursed his face. He always wore it too openly, and blushed too easily, an embarrassing trait for a man who needed to command the respect of others.

Alistair had given him the sword, as a goodbye gift. It had been his, once.

“Well,” he said, endeavoring for lightness. “If you’re really skiving off _again_ , I might add – “

“Oh yes,” said Alistair, cheerfully unrepentant. “Just like the good old days.”

“Well, do you want something to eat? I know there’s a feast – “

“Please,” Alistair interrupted. “I actually _miss_ bad guard food. Can we just eat the plate of something?”

“You dressed like that? Meredith would have my hide.”

“Give me some of your mail then.”

Cullen looked around at the half-abandoned room of armor and then reluctantly nodded. He secretly thought he had never seen Alistair look so happy as he did when he was being kitted out.

“It’s been too long,” he sighed, pleased. “They always have me in velvet. Have you ever sweated in velvet? It’s awful. It’s like wiping your skin with a cat.”

“Come on,” Cullen rolled his eyes, dragging Alistair – in full helm – after him.

Alistair stumbled a bit with the limited slit visibility, but then acclimated quickly, his brain remembering the trick of turning the head constantly for a better scope of where and how to walk.

The barracks were so familiar, Cullen almost forgot he was with someone who didn’t know them.

“Stop gawping,” he hissed at Alistair, who quickly put his head back down, following Cullen.

They found the end of the line, and Alistair pushed the visor up, beaming around, pink cheeked and sweat dripping off his nose.

“Maker’s breath, it’s hot in here.”

“Yes,” said Cullen dryly. “And when you were announced by carriage this morning, we had to put ours on at dawn.”

“For fuck’s sake,” sighed Alistair irritably, then glanced at Cullen. “ _Whoops_.”

“Shut up,” Cullen said irritably. “I was _thirteen_.”

“Don’t swear _please_ ,” mimicked Alistair in a high-pitched voice. “The Maker will _hear_ you.”

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

Alistair stopped smiling at once. Then took a moment to take the tin tray from the pile and follow Cullen down the line, allowing different congealing foods to be spooned onto his plate. “I know,” he said at last, as they found a table by a window for some airflow. “But you have.”

“Me?” Cullen tried for a laugh. “I’m the same stick in the mud I ever was. And you’re still getting in trouble.”

“The trouble might be getting to you,” Alistair said, his voice unusually serious. It struck Cullen that he hadn’t seen Alistair in person – hadn’t spoken with him – since his Joining. He had grown up in five years in a way Cullen hadn’t expected.

They talked quietly together about the situation in Kirkwall, where Cullen was a lot franker and more honest than he would have been in Meredith’s office. At the end of the meal, which Alistair had scraped clean with absolute relish, he still looked grim.

“So things are worse than I realized.”

“Worse than communicated,” corrected Cullen. “As they usually are.”

“Huh,” said Alistair thoughtfully, then looked at Cullen. “And you know Hawke?”

“Know her? A bit. She comes by every time she’s passing through the square, or we nod at each other. Kirkwall’s not as big as it seems, and I’ve been here for four years now, with no real plans to leave anytime soon.”

“Do you think you could introduce me?”

“You? To Hawke?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems like Hawke is the only person actually _doing_ anything in a city of stalemate.”

Cullen breathed out an annoyed breath. “That’s not fair,” he said shortly. “You don’t understand how Meredith – “

“Oh, I’m starting to understand,” Alistair said steadily, his eyes on Cullen. “Are you, yet? Or are you dazzled by the shiny badge of authority?”

“What?”

“You know how you are. Always respected it. Me? Never held much truck with it.”

“Alistair – “

“Don’t _Alistair_ me. We haven’t seen each other in five years – you know that’s as long as we knew each other? And you’re sitting here _Alistair_ -ing me? Where’s a chess board. We better cram in as much as we can into the little time I can steal.”

“But your wife, Anora.”

“I told you,” Alistair sounded even testier. “It’s an arranged marriage. The Hero of Fereldan organized it as a way to keep the country together after the Blight. We don’t even _like_ each other. Separate bedrooms, the whole thing. We’re basically coworkers. Chess board? I see one, over there.”

Cullen, recognizing the tone in Alistair’s voice, knew it would be useless to argue. Instead, he went to fetch the game board and pieces kept in the barracks cafeteria. It was cheap, made of chipped painted wood squares and inexpertly hacked pieces, but Cullen loved it. He knew every inch of it and played everyone in the barracks who would have a go at him.

“Bride of the Maker, this is a piece of shit.”

“Alistair – “

“See? Another _Alistair_. Come on. You have to admit.”

“It’s what we can afford.”

“I’ll get you a new set.”

“No. I like this one.”

“It’s not a problem. Anything you like.”

“I don’t want it here.”

“Cullen, come on, why not?”

“Because!”

“I _am_ your king, you know.”

Cullen’s back straightened, and he cursed himself for immediately saluting authority, just after Alistair had mocked him for doing so.

“Because,” and he struck upon an idea. “I don’t want to seem above the men. Everyone here has so little. So many of them – of us, really – are refugees. It’s be in poor taste to be their captain, and hopefully promoted to commander, and have a marble chess set, or whatever you were planning.”

Alistair immediately nodded, his face relaxing. “I understand,” he said. “I remember campaigning.” His expression grew wistful. “Who’d have thought I’d miss freezing under the stars?”

“Here,” said Cullen, clenching his jaw against the things he wanted to say. Things about him and Alistair. Things about how hard life had been; he would only sound like he was whining. Templars were trained to endure. How could he do any less simply because life wasn’t what he had expected when he was a starry-eyed child? “I’ll be white.”

* * *

“Commander?”

Cullen glanced up from his desk. It was clear except of papers, but these were ones he had read dozens of times. Skyhold was freezing, and he had kept the black wolf mantle and armored gauntlets on in his office. He was officially reading the documents. He was _not_ boring a hole through the wood to the first drawer beneath where a syringe of lyrium lay nestled in its box.

He half expected Cassandra to barge down his door at any thought of it.

“Come in.”

The Templar’s name. He could remember this. It was Flissa. Or something very like it. She was solidly built, with brown hair, and she owed the Inquisitor her life.

They all did.

“Thank you,” he said, instead of risking a guess on her name. She set a wrapped parcel on his desk. “What is it?”

“Package for you sir.”

That was Templar speak for “look, it’s the blighted box I’ve put on your desk, I don’t know any more than you do.”

Cullen smiled tiredly. “Thank you.”

Flissa nodded, turned, and left.

Cullen glanced at the box. He was thirty years old. He wondered if Mia was still sending him care packages. She did that sometimes, though he knew she was mad at him currently for “dying” in the blast at Haven a few months before.

He cut the packaging string with a knife at his belt.

It was a mahogany box, which he flipped open and then paused, surprised. A folded letter was inside, and was on top of beautifully carved marble chess figures.

The note was very short.

_As Commander for the Inquisition, you can’t say you can’t have nice things. Finally got it to you after six years. Cheers – Alistair._

Cullen tried to pull a chess piece out of its nestled place but then, scowling, pulled off his gauntlet and shook it onto the desk. The pieces were a deep white marbled in black, and a glossy black marbled in white. They were all intricately carved. The white side – _his side_ , he knew – the pawns were all templars holding shields in front of them at parade rest. The black pawns were all mages, two hands on an upright staff. He almost laughed at the obviousness.

He set the pieces on the desk, then took out a rook from either side: the white rook was an Orzammar berserker and the black rook was a Qunari warrior. On the white side, the knight was a Grey Warden on a griffin, on the black side a Dalish hunter on a halla. The white bishop was a Seeker in full armor, the Chant of Light in hand, and the black side was an Antivan Crow, two daggers drawn. And the queen of the white side was the White Divine, paired with the king of the black side as the Black Divine of Tevinter. The black queen was Empress Celene, and the white king –

“It’s me,” said a voice from the doorway.

Cullen looked up from where he was peering at the carven figure.

“Alistair,” he said, stunned.

It had been years again since they had seen one another, and now Alistair was slim and fit, his beard trimmed down to golden stubble, his eyebrows quirked. The third decade of his life agreed with him, and his clothes were less ostentatious than the brightly colored silks of Kirkwall.

Cullen belatedly straightened, moving around the table without conscious thought to clasp the other man in a hug.

Alistair grunted a tiny puff of air, and Cullen backed off sheepishly. He had forgotten his breastplate.

“What are you doing here?”

“Had business with the Chantry mother, about refugees in Redcliffe. Came to see the Inquisitor and your ambassador.”

He paused.

“And you.”

Cullen swallowed.

“Still unmarried, I hear, despite breaking hearts at the Winter Palace.”

Cullen sighed hugely. “Don’t remind me. That was awful.” Then he held up the white chess piece in his ungloved hand. “A bit conceited to make the king yourself.”

“Oh, it definitely was,” said Alistair cheekily. “But I figured you wouldn’t have gotten your beat-up old board out of Haven, and there must be _someone_ in this moldering ruin who would play with you.”

Cullen held out the king piece. “What about you? Fancy a game?”

“I am your king,” said Alistair, quoting himself.

“Oh,” said Cullen, suddenly feeling reckless and brave. He went down on one knee.

Alistair’s face flooded in panic. “What are you doing?”

Cullen smiled angelically. “Kneeling for you.”

The Templar Flissa had been returning to bring a secondary message to the Commander when the door slammed hastily in her face. Without a word, she turned on her heel and left, purposefully blocking her ears to the unmistakable sounds behind her.


End file.
